


hard feelings

by beecalm



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Fix-It, Introspection, M/M, Pre-Relationship, [shoves the two of them together] please communicate, post episode 7, the rain scene (part 2)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:03:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29726655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beecalm/pseuds/beecalm
Summary: It’s no secret that, for every hurdle Langa has challenged and jumped and soared high above, Reki was stood behind him- one hand firm on his shoulder, pushing him onwards. That grin on his face, all firecracker bright and Okinawa sunshine.Or, Langathoughtit was no secret.
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki
Comments: 16
Kudos: 398





	hard feelings

**Author's Note:**

> written in one sitting as an attempt to remedy the _awful_ writing slump ive been in lately- posting anonymously because there's no expectations when nobody Actually knows who you are
> 
> update: anon filter has been removed because this got. a lot more attention than expected (thank you so much!)

When Langa’s board breaks, the first thought that comes to mind is that _Reki_ would have noticed before he’d even set foot on it _._

Little details like that never got past him. Loose screws and weird posture and all the times Langa wanted to try something out of his bento box, but never even had to open his mouth to ask. Observant in a way that would probably be unsettling if it was anyone other than Reki. 

If things were still normal, Langa wouldn’t have got the chance to put his board on the ground before Reki would have his travel toolkit open and ready, shooting that firework grin over his shoulder. _Of course I can fix it. I can fix anything._ Langa wouldn’t be half-way down Crazy Rock with the rotating wheels of his skateboard locked sideways, because _Reki_ was the one who made sure he was ready to fly.

Miya keeps telling him that he needs to stop talking about Reki like he’s dead. (That he needs to stop talking about Reki at _all,_ because he’s been bringing the mood down even worse than the treacherous rain-slick of the rocks.)

The board throws Langa off into the wall, and he doesn’t even need to _look_ at it to know it’s not something he can fix on his own.

The route to the entrance feels five times as long on foot, carrying the weight of his board under one arm and hoping that nobody comes around the corner fast enough to knock him off his feet. Preventing things like this was always Reki’s forte. Langa never got tired of watching him work; precise with his details and innovative with his ideas, every habit and intricacy accounted for. For all their callouses built up from years of fall damage, Reki’s hands could make _anything_ work, no matter how small or difficult.

Langa would bet the world on it.

It’s no secret that, for every hurdle Langa has challenged and jumped and soared high above, Reki was stood behind him- one hand firm on his shoulder, pushing him onwards. That _grin_ on his face, all firecracker bright and Okinawa sunshine. 

Or, Langa _thought_ it was no secret. He’s never been good at noticing things like that.

The broken skateboard feels like a poorly-timed metaphor. Some cosmic joke, as Langa announces that he’s heading home early because he can’t skate with his wheels stuck on sideways. Because he doesn’t know how to fix it himself. 

(As much as the heart-stopping thrill of climbing higher and further and _faster faster faster_ is close to all-consuming- Langa can’t do it alone.)

-

Reki is avoiding him.

Social cues have never really been Langa’s thing. It took him a month to notice that the girl who kept studying with him back in Canada was hitting on him, rather than just being very friendly. He didn’t notice that he was being talked into joining the baseball team until the signup forms were in his hands. He might as well have been called oblivious more times than he’s been called his own _name_. 

Still, it’s hard to mistake the fact that Reki is no longer sat beside him in class, smuggling skateboarding clips and snacks behind his textbook. 

He’s swapped with some unsuspecting kid from the other side of the room, who completes his work quietly and looks uncomfortable when Langa goes to prod him with a pencil out of habit. Langa gets more work done than he has since Reki and skating first slotted themselves neatly into every aspect of his routine, but it doesn’t feel _good._

They don’t eat together on the roof at lunch, they don’t skate home together, they don’t ride up to _S_ together with Reki’s arms looped comfortably around Langa’s waist. 

The board sits with its fucked up wheels in the corner of Langa’s room, and he’s late to school because he forgot just how long _walking_ takes. He understands, now, why Reki always kicks the ground as he steps, always swings around corners and takes crossings at a run when they’re about to turn red. Life moves past in slow-motion, like wading through snow that muffles every sound.

The list of things which Langa doesn’t know how to fix just keeps growing. 

_Skateboarding_ and _conversation_ are two very different concepts, he’s started to realise. _Mistakes,_ in skateboarding and snowboarding alike, are par for the course. You capture every error on tape, film every time gravity goes sideways and you end up face-first against the ground- and then you learn from it the next time you try. 

When a conversation goes wrong, when Langa says the _stupidest_ things because he’s never known how to see what’s right in front of him, he can’t just brush off the dust and say _better luck next time_. 

_We’re not a good match any more_ feels like a curse and a warning and a long time coming. Langa had stood under the lamp post like a lost dog for who knows how long afterwards, soaked through by the rain and hoping that Reki would come back and let him try again. Like he’d just messed up an ollie and scraped both of his knees, and Reki would patch him up and tell him _you almost got it this time._

He doesn’t come back, because the gap between them is too far for even Langa to soar across. The worst part is; he doesn’t even understand where it came from.

-

Langa makes it to Dope Sketch three minutes before closing time, as the sun has started to dip low and warm against the skyline. He wastes one of the minutes he has left loitering outside, then another peering in through the door to the point that people start giving him odd looks, like he’s a robbery waiting to happen.

“I’m just about to lock up-” Reki doesn’t look up from the boxes he’s rummaging through when Langa finally steps inside, reciting off the warning like it’s a common occurrence. “Unless you know exactly what you’re buying, then-”

He cuts himself off when he turns his head towards the doorway; eyes wide, voice cracking at the edges.

Before, Reki had always managed to make tiredness look _exciting-_ the exhilarated grin he’d wear after finally nailing a trick, falling to the ground in a fit of breathless laughter. A forest fire of a smile that would pull Langa right down with him. Now, he just looks exhausted. Like he hasn’t slept in the three days since it rained all night and the earth between them split in two. Langa’s stomach does something nauseating and _not-good-at-all_.

“What do you-” it’s Reki who speaks first, still crouched on the ground and not quite meeting Langa’s eyes.

“The wheels,” He holds his board out in front of him like an ineffective shield. “They jammed and I can’t figure out how to put them back.”

A brief flash of worry passes across Reki’s face. “Were you racing when it broke?”

Langa shakes his head. “Just practicing. I fell, but it didn’t hurt any worse than usual.”

“Did nobody even notice that something was off?” The tired frown on Reki’s face doesn’t shift as he takes the board from Langa’s hands and pulls out a toolkit from under the counter, but at least he’s avoiding Langa’s eyes for a reason, now. Small mercies.

“You’re the only person who catches things like that,” when Langa stoops down to perch on the edge of one of the shelves, he wonders if he imagines the way Reki’s hands still, just for a heartbeat. A second of hesitation, gone as soon as it began.

The air between them is occupied by a heavy, unspoken weight that neither of them attempt to acknowledge. Reki fills the space with the clatter of tools as he tries to free the wheels of Langa’s board from where they’re locked in place, and Langa busies himself with watching the traffic outside. The sky has fallen almost completely dark and car headlights catch in the raindrops that linger on the windows, cutting off Reki’s reflection in the glass every time they pass. 

Silence is a strange and unwelcome thing between them. Even when they used to sit side-by-side in Reki’s bedroom working on their own things- it had never felt quiet in the slightest. Not with Reki’s louder-than-thunder, warmer-than-summer existence pressed up against Langa’s side, laughing at skating videos and stealing snacks right out of his hands.

It feels like missing an organ- something you hardly realise is _there_ until it isn’t any more.

“I said it’s done,” Langa almost smacks his forehead against the window when Reki’s face swims alongside his own in the glass, the skateboard bridging the gap between them. His laugh sounds half empty. “You’re always so spaced out.”

The emptiness that follows it is awful, as if Langa has landed on his back in the snow for the first time in years. It shouldn’t snow in Okinawa. Not when Reki is there.

“Are you going to _S_ tonight?” The question escapes before Langa can do anything to stop it, a last-ditch attempt to fill the silence. Reki recoils like he’s been punched, then schools his expression back into something neutral and _awful_.

“I’m super busy today, actually,” he tugs at his hair and Langa hates that, if he hadn’t already learned the hard way, he would have believed him without hesitation. “You can go without me.”

“I’m not going either,” though he’s desperate for the thud of his heart against his ribcage, the feeling of snowfall in summertime as he tumbles through the air and _flies-_ it’s not the same when Langa can’t look down and see Reki grinning right back at him. _S_ can wait. The old mine isn’t going to disappear in a night- the skaters who make it a second home cling to its slopes like knotweed.

“I thought you wanted to skate against Adam again,” the name leaves Reki’s mouth like a curse, and Langa is beginning to understand where things might have gone _wrong_. “I already told you that you can do whatever you want.”

(Langa wants to climb so high that he can see the whole of Okinawa turn itself into a sea of stars below his feet. He also doesn’t want to be standing there alone.)

“I know.” Langa waits by the door, a wordless _follow, please._ “So, where should we go today?”

-

Though days have passed, the air still clings onto the dampness of rainfall- the streetlamps cutting wet slices out of the night sky as they skate in single-file through the sidestreets. Reki doesn’t follow when Langa slides down the railing by the side of the road, gliding past without a word, and everything about it feels wrong wrong _wrong_ deep inside of his chest.

The familiar sound of Reki’s board stops beneath the overpass, the graffiti star hanging above like a beacon in the streetlamp beams. 

“Langa,” Reki asks, after a moment too long. “What do you want from me?” 

Langa almost falls off his own board, slamming to a halt so hard that his ankles groan in protest. Where he stands just out of the light, Reki’s hands are curled into fists at his side, head bowed so the sweep of his hair covers his eyes.

“Why do you keep hanging out with me?” He speaks little louder; a sharp, bitter edge to his voice. “Don’t you have better things to do?”

Langa blinks. Sure, he could be skating at _S_ , where his name has become commonplace and hunger to _improve_ is a beast that takes permanent residence in his stomach- but there’s only so many times he can scan the crowd for Reki’s shock of hair, his bright eyes, only to find them missing.

“Reki-” he tests the waters, takes a step closer. 

“The slimes don’t hang out with the heroes- right?” Reki’s voice is an explosion beneath the overpass for all the wrong reasons, and Langa feels like he’s making all the same mistakes, all over again. There’s no video clips of failure here to learn from and laugh at weeks down the line. Though the sky is clear, Langa can feel meltwater running into his eyes. “ _Snow_ should be up there with the big names, not sitting around with the low-lives.”

The feeling of ice-water crashes over Langa and suddenly, jarringly, he understands _you’re nothing like me_ and _I can’t keep up_ and _we don’t match any more._ It’s the same deal as always- obvious in hindsight, unnoticeable when it was sitting right in front of his face. Langa sits down heavily on the curb, feet pushing his board back and forth like it’ll do anything to ease the way his chest feels as if it's been hollowed out entirely.

“You thought I was leaving you behind?” He speaks to the traffic overhead, as Reki finally settles down beside him.

“It’s not that. You being _good_ isn’t the problem,” the truck which passes by overhead almost carries away the threadbare ends of Reki’s voice. He doesn’t sound like himself. “Every time you _fly_ it’s like. You’re a goddamn genius and I want the whole world to know it- but people started to _talk_ ,”

Langa’s board almost escapes him, and the streetlamp overhead flickers and hums.

“I’m not jealous. I don’t want you to fail just so I can-” Reki’s fingernails dig into the fabric of his trousers. “- I don’t know, feel a bit less terrible. But you’re up there with the rest of them, acting like risking your life is _fun._ I feel like I can’t reach you anymore.”

The gap between them yawns so wide that the meter of pavement beside Langa distorts itself into an eternity. An uncomfortable, tangible thing- a stormcloud waiting to break. “I want to do everything I can to get better,” Langa starts. “So I can win against Adam, even if it’s scary.”

“Why do you keep bringing him up?” Reki’s voice turns loud and sharp and terrified again, breaking at the edges. “I said you can do whatever you want- if you want to race, then just go to _S_ and stop wasting your time hanging around under bridges with-”

“But you’re the one who taught me to skate,” in one clumsy movement, Langa bridges the gap between them to grab onto Reki’s shoulder and hold him steady. The contact is something he never believed he’d miss so fiercely- the press of Reki’s knee against his own as his board goes rolling off down the street, the warmth beneath his hands. “You made me a board I can fly with and when I see the ground below me, you’re the first person I look for. If I didn’t have this thing-” he points at where his board comes to rest at the base of the lamp post. “Then I’d still be stuck trying to avoid obstacles without falling because I forget that skateboards have _wheels_.”

Reki opens his mouth to protest. “That’s not true.”

“Teach me, then,” heart a tandem in his chest, Langa scrambles to his feet. “Teach me how to go around corners on a normal board.”

It’s Reki’s turn to look confused, eyebrows furrowed, lips pulled into a frown, but he still rises to his feet as if on autopilot. He stands for a long while, like he’s thinking things over, putting the pieces in place. “Show me first, so I can see what I’m working with,” he unloads his own board into Langa’s arms, with its bright decals, worn edges- all his own handiwork.

If Langa has lived an entire life with a board below his feet, brought up under the instruction of the best snowboarder he’s ever known- then Reki has built himself from nothing using sheer willpower alone. Langa doesn’t know how anyone could watch him without stars in their eyes. (Or maybe that’s just his heart speaking. Maybe his feelings have always been about more than just skateboarding. Maybe this is the _worst_ fucking time to realise that Reki’s eyes look golden beneath the lamplight.)

He closes his eyes, counts to ten, and shelves that line of thought for much, much later.

As he walks back to the top of the slope with Reki’s skateboard, Langa feels as if he’s been catapulted weeks into the past. Back to when he spent more time on the ground than he did on his board, and Reki was always there to pick him back up again, to grin like a supernova at every tiny milestone. Back when it wasn’t about hunger, first place- faster and higher and stronger. There was an emptiness in Langa’s chest that followed him from Canada to Okinawa, one that turned into a black hole; somewhere between the boy with bright eyes from the back of class denying gravity to fly above his head, and the mad rush of _S_ that turned excitement into something altogether more feverish.

He’s starting to realise that he might need to find a balance, somewhere between the lines.

It’s hard finding his footing on Reki’s board- it’s smaller than he’s used to, the center of gravity a little further forwards, and the poor lighting does him no favours, too. Still, he makes it to the bottom of the slope with few issues, relaxing into it like it’s muscle memory, left over from that first night with his feet duct-taped to his board.

He swings around the corner, the forward-facing wheels resist the movement with everything they’ve got, and Langa falls flat on his back. The surprise knocks the air out of him more than the impact does, and he stares dazedly at the lamp post until it stops doing loops in front of his eyes. The ground is a little damp and a little cold, but he thinks he might just lie there forever.

Then Reki starts _laughing._

A proper laugh, the _real_ kind, the sort Langa didn’t realise he missed until the storm broke overhead and Reki’s voice turned hollow at the edges. The forest-fire laugh that catches in his throat and makes his nose scrunch up and kind of strikes the air out of Langa’s chest worse than any fall he could take. He’s trying to hide it behind his hand as if he doesn’t laugh with his entire body, as if the traffic hasn’t chosen the right moment to reach a standstill on the overpass. 

“I forgot how badly you _suck_ at that,” Reki chokes out breathlessly, before tears of laughter turn into something altogether more real and vulnerable.

When Langa tells him _sorry-_ it isn’t just for being terrible at corners, for almost taking the wheels off his board in the process. _I’m scared too,_ it says. _I’ll wait for you,_ it promises. _I want to skate with you because you’re Kyan Reki- not anything else,_ it swears. 

Little details like that never get past Reki, after all.

They still have things to talk about, new boundaries to lay out in the dirt, an entire closet full of skeletons to face. But when Reki crosses the space that lies between them like it's easy as breathing and loops his arms around Langa’s shoulders, he can put it all aside just for a little while. They both kind of smell and Reki’s hair has too much product in it and Langa knows he must be all damp from lying on the pavement- but _fitting together_ has never come so easily. 

It’s reassurance that, somehow, they still match.

“You’re going to squash me,” Langa’s voice comes out muffled, his nose half-buried in the sweep of Reki’s hair in the hope that he won’t catch the way his face is too warm to blame on the summertime heat.

“Good,” Reki replies, smiling with his words. Not the grin Langa has come to expect and know and love- but it’s not bad, either. It’s just _good, good good,_ and it’s enough.

-

They stop at a vending machine on the route home, and Langa is bruised all over from falling on his ass at the corner more times than he can count on both hands. His own board below his feet is a welcome presence, one he doesn’t think he’d exchange for anything, but _learning_ again was fun. For both of them, clearly- Reki filling his phone gallery with videos and teaching him where to put his feet, where to lean, where to stand.

The vending machine is near luminous on the street corner, cutting the lines of Reki’s face out of the darkness as he chews on his thumbnail and deliberates which drinks he can buy with the loose change in his pocket. 

From where he waits, Langa can see the bruises on Reki’s arms under the backlight, the grazes and callouses and tiny scars shaping out years of hard work on his skin. There’s plenty of room for him to grow, to learn that not everyone can do what he does. (Langa hopes that one day, he’ll find the right words to tell him directly.)

“I can’t skate without you,” he tells Reki, as he catches the bottle of orange soda thrown his way.

Silence stretches out, long and neon-lit and not at all uncomfortable, and Reki nudges him with his arm as he passes on his board. Comfortable, familiar, a quiet _thank you_. They’ll talk later, once the sun rises and they’re awake enough to hash out insecurities, the damage done, the unspoken weight that doesn’t feel quite so heavy any more.

Now, they skate the long route home through the winding sidestreets, drink cheap vending machine soda, and Reki wastes no time in sliding down every stair rail they pass.

It’s not raining, and Langa thinks they might just be fine.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> twt: bee__calm


End file.
